Monday, 4 March 2013

Vaffa!

I’m
going to ask you to imagine that we have just had a general election. I’m
going to do more than that: I want you to imagine that the Monster Raving
Looney Party has emerged as the strongest force in Parliament.
Impossible, you say; such a thing is beyond imagination. Oh, no, it is
not; at least it’s not in Italy. Following the recent election Beppe
Grillo’s Five Star Movement attracted a quarter of the vote. It now has
108 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, and 54 in the Senate.

Who’s
Beppe Grillo, you ask? He’s a comedian, that’s who he is, part of a long
tradition of Italian funny men. Where people once chanted ‘Du-ce!’
‘Du-ce!’ then now chant ‘Bep-pe! Bep-pe!’ His story is remarkable, even more remarkable
in some ways than that of Mussolini. Turning from jokes to political
activism, Il Beppe founded the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S) – the Five Star
movement – in Milan in October, 2009, the very same city, incidentally, where
life was first breathed into Fascism in 1919. The capital V in the party
title – well, not so much a party as a movement – stands for Vaffa!, the
leader’s own signature, which roughly translates as Fuck off!

And
how Grillo wants so much in Italian life, particularly to Italian politics, to,
well, Vaffa! Ever since 2005, when he started his blog, now the most
popular in Italy, he has gathered a large following among the disaffected,
chiefly from the young. Many of his new MPs and Senators only just scrape
past the minimum 25 age limit for entering Parliament. These are the
people for whom, in their disgust, Vaffa! has become the watchword; these are
the people who have been the devotees of Beppe’s Vaffa! Day, or V Day, set up
in 2007.

All
politicians are crooks, says Beppe, apart from his own, of course, a line that
echoes all the way back to 1919. He’s now had his very own, and rather
remarkable, March on Rome. The Economist, that maiden aunt of political
journalism, is tut tutting its disapproval in the latest issue. Send in
the clowns, the old dear trumpets across her front cover, with an additional
How Italy’s disastrous election threatens the future of the euro. Inside
the humourless dowager drones on about those naughty Italian children,
determined as they are to avoid reality. It’s not just the future of the
euro that is threatened, she witters on, but the future of Italy itself.

Dear, oh dear, there is Beppe and Silvio Berlusconi, the other clown who made a
reasonably good showing, moving ever forward while “...Mario Monti, the
reform-minded technocrat who has led Italy for the past 15 months and restored
much of its battered credibility, got a measly 10%” Really, there is only
one word for that and the word is...Vaffa!

Democracy
would be all right if it wasn’t for the voters. That’s the reality of the
European Union, a reality clearly endorsed by the Economist. The people
did not want Monti; Monti was imposed upon them. Now the people, rather
inconveniently, have spoken, exposing the fraudulent politics of Europe with a
bold finger gesture. Me ne freggo! – I don’t give a damn - , now there is
another decent slogan worth reviving.

The
inconclusive result of the election is conclusive on one point at least:
Italians do not want to be ruled by the technocrats, either of the Brussels or
the local variety. Monti was imposed on them in 2011 without elections by
the Eurocrats. Charles Moore puts the point very well in his Spectator
Notes. Just imagine (sorry, I hope I’m not overtaxing you here!) if David
Cameron was kicked out of office by the European Central Bank, which decreed
that Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the chairman of the Financial Services
Authority, was elevated in his place. Yes, I too would support any
British Beppe who came along, Ken Dodd or whoever, rather than the cat’s paw of
the European banking-bureaucracy complex.

People
can only be pushed so far before they start to get angry. Our own anger
was shown in a small way during the recent Eastleigh by-election, which saw the
United Kingdom Independence Party pushing the Conservatives into a humiliating
third place. ‘It’s only a protest vote’, the Tory apparatchiks wailed,
‘The masses will return in 2015.’ Oh, really, will they? Only, I think,
if they are in a gay mood, as Cameron hopes. But the anger over Europe,
over the highhandedness of the dreadful European tyranny, grows by the
day. The Long March of UKIP is by no means over.

And
then there is the onward march of Beppe. His politics are not my
politics; he is far too left-wing and statist for that, far too, ahem,
fascist! Still, he is a symptom of a growing disgust across the whole of
Europe with Europe, with those who make a mockery of democracy because it does
not suit their technocratic ends. “We are all young”, the sixty-four-year
old Beppe says on his blog. “We’re a movement of many people who are uniting
from the bottom up. We don’t have structures, hierarchies, bosses,
secretaries...No one gives us orders.” Yes, I am young. I turn to
Brussels and I really only have one word – Vaffa!

The left are the architects of most of our woes so it would appear strange that a populist movement should seek left wing policies to cure those woes. Any objective analysis quickly establishes where fault lies and it lies with the people whose aspirations can be reduced to two requirements cultural socialism (stolen from your cultural Marxism remark) and economic responsibility. That being the case then it is not strange at all as the average Joe Public does not understand that the two are uncomfortable bedfellows. The left can and have given lashings of the former but very little of the latter which was fine until now because the wealth has run out and the ability to create more has been severely curtailed. Caused by the very fact of giving cultural socialism without economic responsibility. The right understands the problem and wish not to do away with cultural socialism but to do it in a more economically responsible way which of course means greatly reducing cultural socialism. The people cannot understand and will not accept that way of thinking as they want the penny and the bun "hands off our beloved NHS" is a typical people think even though that is a perfect example where both aspirations of the people are in opposition to one another. The right can never win the argument as Camerloon recognised and decided not to fight the left but join them. Margaret Thatcher did stand up to the left but in the end she was ousted to placate populist opinion. The austerity that one by one the developed nations are experiencing is the direct result of the overindulgence of cultural socialism and economic incompetence of the left. So the people who will not allow right wing solutions to solve today's problems and crises are having them forced upon them anyway. They can kick up a fuss and demand that cultural socialism be kept at the level they have become accustomed to as much as they like but in the end economic forces will take that decision away from them. This situation is very unstable because what is occurring is not controlled and so I have no doubt that the end result will be very unpleasant for all of us.

About Me

Hi, I'm Ana! History is my passion -and that is not too strong a word - but I also enjoy politics, philosophy, art, literature and travel. In addition I have a deep interest in witchcraft, in all of the ancient arts. Apart from that I'm a keen sportswoman. I play lacrosse and tennis, but I love riding most of all. I have my own horse, Annette.